Church and State in the US - The New York times supplies an impressivley even-handed description of the current church/state debate in the US. If you read an article about politics this month, read this one.

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In a glorious attempt to destroy any remaining shred of privacy I may have on this online journal, it is time to trace my running route. First, I had to trace it myself, trying to figure out how far it was. So, I bought a replacement battery for my bike distance tracker attachement. Adding an extra ‘e’ to that word gives it more authority. Anyhow, I went to the specialty battery store, which, at a sterile 66 degrees, was completely devoid of people except myself and the sales clerk. He asked me what I needed and I handed him the button battery from my bike attachement. He glanced at it for about two seconds, and walked around the counter to a shelf directly behind me, plucking a small battery from the shelf. I began to question to legitimacy of this man’s job. A battery store would be the ultimate application of the ‘self-serve’ check-out ideal: walk up to a store front about the size of an ATM, hand the machine your battery (or type in the words on the front of it), and you are able to select from the available batteries. It grabs them from an automatic stockroom, you pay, and it hands you a battery. The man in the battery store probably would not like this idea.

Installation of the battery in the attachement went fine, and I traced out my distance, being sure to cut corners where I do when I run, and avoiding small children and cars along the way. You may think that last detail was superfluous, however I have been known to run into small children (both accompanied by their parents and alone), and quite nearly into cars at blind stop signs. The realization that running into something would ruin my distance tracking is probably the only thing that kept me from doing so. My route turned out to be exactly 3.1 miles. I do mean exactly. Just as I passed the end of my driveway, where I customarily end my run, the counter flipped over to 3.1 miles.

So, I set out to run this in 18 minutes. 13mph wind. 92 degrees out. What a dumb idea. I mean, 92 degrees? Mile one was good, downhill, made it in 6:05. Mile two: my body asked “why are you doing this to me?” Got one of those shivers up your back which signal the approaching visit of adrenaline or tunnel vision, the latter in this case. Pulled it together and came across the 2 mile mark at 12:30. Mile three: death. See, I forgot to factor in mile three’s half-mile ridiculous-hill-‘o’-pain-and-agony (the big straight horizontal line on the map). This made my final mile 8 minutes long. Finished at house at 20 minutes, 30 seconds, stumbled inside and hosed down with cold water.

As suspected, within ten minutes I found myself saying “gosh legs and heart that wasn’t so bad.” My legs, the punks that they are, replied “sit down … now.” My heart simply said “boom boom boom boom boom …” Stomach reported “possible nausea.”

UPDATE: I should have used a wonderful Google Maps API Hack called “Google Pedometer” to map my route. My latest route came in at 5 miles. This awesome tool saves the trouble of biking the routes, though I think I still will as biking is such a pleasure.

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Experimenting with the external flash.

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A huge fire consumed this building the night before.

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Why did I join the facebook? (For a quick definition of facebook: it’s like an interactive yearbook spanning your high school and college careers). Anyhow, the above question sprang into my mind today as I looked at my “confirm friends” page and realized that the two people listed on it are not people I would call friends and are either (a) insecure folk who simply are trying to increase the number of people listed under their “is friends with” column; or are (b) random celebrities listed by people too bored to do something constructive and original with their spare time. I joined facebook because everyone else did, I admit it. Sometimes I wish there were bandwagons for reading good books or learning to paint or something. Just think of the thousands of hours wasted by people clicking around on facebook when they could have been learning something. People are crazy.

I classified this post as “media,” meaning I will go on to talk about other ways I have been spending my media time lately. Here is a crazy-amazing list of songs and albums you should listen to.

William Ackerman - Returning
Great solid mellow guitar album. The way he uses the guitar reminds me of the way George Winston uses the piano - he lets the instrument speak out with its full range of voices.

Train - Drops of Jupiter - Mississippi
An unexpectedly un-poppy gem on an otherwise mediocre album. Flows just like the river of its namesake.

Guster - Keep It Together - Come Downstairs and Say Hello
‘Dorothy moves to click her ruby shoes/Right in tune with dark side of the moon’ - songs just don’t begin much better. Listen for it to turn into a building ethereal Coldplay-esque anthem later in the song; perfect.

Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album - Why You’d Want to Live Here
Death Cab sings about weather a lot: here, that certainly works for him. His lyrics paint the gritty LA just as well as the music grinds out the sounds of a city.

Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek - Speak for Yourself
Best electronic effect of the past … 3 years. Essentially, she’s layering her vocal tracks and sustaining them to make them sound like an organ. Unreal good.

Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American - Get It Faster
Creepiest beginning to a rock song I have ever heard. Listen to the way the guitars switch at split second intervals from distorted to clean and back beginning at 2:26 - fun to listen to.

Maybe I will write these “media” posts more often. There are movies, music, and books all the time.

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I took 40+ pictures of fireworks, all bad. Fortunately, this picture of the crowd turned out really cool: the glowsticks people were carrying blurred through in a really neat way.

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